Tomorrow two years of the entry into force of the Housing Law will be completed. A regulation that the Government took years to give birth and that aspired to be part of the solution to the serious crisis that Spain lives in this matter. But as one thing is the desires and another realities, the truth is that, rather than solve, what the law has done is, according to the data and the analysis of the experts, aggravate the problemespecially as far as rental accessibility is concerned.
In national terms, lA housing offer for rent has fallen in these two years in 120,000 unitsaccording to the calculations of the Rental Observatory of the Safe Foundation, the Rey Juan Carlos University and Tasación Sociedadwhich calculates that the cut will reach the 150,000 when ending 2025. A trend that have also detected the Federation of Real Estate Associations (FAI)who assures that The long -stay rental stock has been reduced by 50%; and Idealisticwhich calculates that only in the first quarter, the available rentals fell another 3% due to the legal insecurity perceived by the homemade since measures such as the new Housing Lease Reference Index (Irav) that the INE elaborates by mandate of the Housing Law to review the prices of rentals represent a brake on profitability -the last, 1.98%, stood more than three tenths below inflation.
In the opposite direction of this offer reduction, prices have done nothing but climb, to the point that the aforementioned observatory ensures that since the Housing Law was introduced, They have risen 26.5%, exceeding the 1,000 euros barrier. The statistics of Fotocasa ensures that while in May 2023 the average price of the square meter for rent was of 11.65 euros, now it is 13.89 euros.
As a recent real estate portal survey ensures, the perception they have Half of the tenants (49%) is that the law makes it difficult for them to rent a property to livetwelve more than a year ago. «The Housing Law benefits tenants who have a contract in force by avoiding annual increases of exorbitant price in their contracts. However, for the potential tenants who seek a rent, the consequences of their implementation have been harmful, since it has caused the withdrawal of more than 30% the available lease offer causing large tensions in prices and creating a very compact market and of little rotation, ”he explains María Matos, director of Studies and spokesman for Fotocasa. “Now, the difficulties of access to rent for rent are worse than before the law,” says Matos. “The housing problem has been clearly aggravated since the approval of the new regulations due to the lack of legal certainty that it offers to the small owners,” he agrees José María Alfaro, president of FAI.
Not even in Cataloniawhere the star disposition of the norm has been applied more intensely, the tensioning areas that allow limiting rental prices to prevent them from rising to the end of the lease; The results of the Housing Law can be considered especially satisfactory to be said of experts. In March, the Generalitat, the Barcelona City Council and the Ministry of Housing sold as a success that In the first three application quarters (from April to December 2024) of these areas in 140 municipalities the prices fell 3.7% on average, reaching 6.4% in the city of Barcelona, According to data from Catalan Land Institute (Incasol).
But this cut, logical for experts because any price limitation implies its reduction and that only benefits those who have a contract in force, has left, however, serious side effects that, following the plot thread of the Matos and Alfaro, harm and much harm those who want to access the market. The most serious, without a doubt, is the Housing offer collapse for traditional rental. Inasol’s own statistics show that The rental contract firm sank 19.65% between April and December. That means that one in five floors that were available in early 2024 were no longer in the end. Which suggests that, although there are more homes in the market -in 2024 17,000 new houses were put in rent in Catalonia -not all are being rented under traditional conditions, he explained Ramón Riera, world president of the International Federation of Real Estate Professionsafter knowing the Incasol data.
Many of them, as the Generalitat himself recognizes, have become housing for temporary rental to dodge regulation. According to Incasol data, the signing of contracts of this type 45% shot in 2024.
In Catalonia, where it has been applied with more intensity, the contract signature has sunk
The percentage is in line with statistics such as idealista, which ensures that while the housing supply for long -term rental has fallen in the four Catalan to lead provinces (42% in Gerona, 37% in Barcelona and Lleida and 36% in Tarragona) 47% of the rental offer in Barcelona is temporary.
This province has lost the most offer in Spain, according to the rental observatory. At the end of the year, according to their calculations, 83,000 homes will barely leave the market to lease.
In his latest report on Spain, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) questions the impulse that has been carried out in the rental control precisely because of the effects that are having on the offer. The agency warns that “this rental price control and abandoned in case of verifying that it reduces the quantity or quality of the regular rental offeror that hinders access by lower -income households ».
In addition to opting for seasonal rental, rooms or the sale of the property, many owners are choosing to get their floors from the market, close them and wait better. In Barcelona, for example, in 2019 there were 1.2% of empty homes, according to a census made by the City Council. However, the most up -to -date data of the INE suggests that it would have been raised to 9.3%, according to the rental observatory.